Thursday, November 26, 2009

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

I hope you are being good when I'm away. This web site has really got me humming. It is a web site of our solar system made to scale. The idea is that you start at the sun and scroll to the right until you find our planets.That's all very easy, I hear you say, as you know the order of the planets already! BUT this model is drawn to scale which means that the size of the planets are drawn in the right proportion- including the distance from the sun. If you go too far or too fast you will miss the planets all together. And Pluto is so tiny and far away it is almost not there at all.

Try it and let me know in the comments how you get on! I just found this little audio widget that records what you say. We might use this one some more to record our voices.

Monday, November 23, 2009

On Saturday I went to the A.&P Show. Mum, Fergus and I entered in lots of baking and here is my gingerbread person and it won first prize! Today I ate it for playlunch. It was delicious.These are my ribbons. The long red one was for my gingerbread person. I also made a fruit and veggie novelty that came first with the ribbon of purple, blue and white. I'm very proud of myself.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Allanah bought these pipes that help us proof read. They are the BOMB!!!! They work like phones that you talk to yourself with and you can clearly hear yourself talk but you aren't talking very loudly. You have to talk very quietly or you will hurt your eardrums.Here is Jordan using one of the pipes. Hope you find mistakes, Jordan!This is Bella and she looks quiet focused there. Keep the good work up there Bella.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Remember there are lots of really good links on our Space Wiki but here are a few that are worth another mention. Click on the graphics to learn more.

All about our solar system and the way it moves...All about the planets - with lots of facts and numbers.All about the space shuttle- watch a video of it taking off.All about the famous people who have contributed to space travel.This photo shows all of the space exploration that humans have made. Click on it to see the detail. For a really decent sized view you can download the original.

NewsTalk ZB article

New Zealand firm Rocket Lab is launching a rocket into space from Great Mercury Island, off the Coromandel Peninsula on November 30.

CEO Peter Beck says the six metre tall rocket will be carrying a two kilogram payload. There is just a hundred grams of space left, which is being auctioned on Trade Me and eBay for anyone who wants to send personal items into space.

Mr Beck says some couples are already trying to book places for their wedding rings.

"If the mission is successful, cause we do recover the payload, whatever goes to space is obviously very historic and so potentially very valuable."

Mr Beck says they're launching from Great Mercury Island as it is near a military zone.

The key aim of the launch is to flight qualify the rocket, to test the systems ahead of flying commercial payloads into space.

Mr Beck says there is demand from from the scientific community to send up equipment to gather climate change data.

"Because there's a tremendous amount of data collected in the Northern Hemisphere and that's great for all your climate change models. But there's a great big gap in the data for the Southern Hemisphere because there's been no activity down here."

So- what would you launch into space????? At the time of writing there is one bid on TradeMe for $3000. How much would you pay and what would you send? Write your answer in the comments....

You need equipment to play cricket and that is a cricket ball, bat, pads, box, gloves, helmet, stumps, bales, leg pads, shoes, clothing.

Cricket is a game where you have two teams and one fields and the other one bats, you have two batters in first and they hit the ball and try and get as many runs as they can, and the fielders field the ball and try and get the batters out.

I play incredible ball cricket and you don’t have the gear that you would have in real cricket. There are bounders in a game and if you hit the ball and it bounces and goes over the boundary it’s a four and if it goes over without bouncing it's a six .

The ways you can get out are Caught, Bowled, Leg before Wicket, Stumped, Ran Out, Wicket, Handle the Ball, Obstructing the Field, Hit ball twice, Timed out. Cricket is a team sport for two teams of eleven players each. The batting actions are lift bat, step forward, swing bat.

The game equipment that it always has to have are the stumps and bales. The stumps are the sticks and the bales are the things that sit on the bales. There are test games, one day games and twenty twenty games you can play. The test games are usually five days and the one days are played in one day before it gets dark, and the 20 20 is 20 overs for each team.

There are umpires for the games that help with deciding whether the players are out or what they hit and what the bowlers do, and if they can’t decide they take it upstairs for the umpires to decide. There are signals that the umpires use they are OUT they raise one hand above their head, FOUR putting their hand horizontal and waving back and forwards, SIX putting both hands above their head, WIDE both hands out the side and there are many more.

On 6 November we had a 38,000 views of our blog party. Allanah and Sylvia brought along all the food and all we had to do was eat it. We like to party and we like it that people follow along with our blog.

Allanah was talking to Mrs A from Hampden Street School and she said that they come to our blog quite a lot to use the reading, spelling and writing digital learning objects.

If you visit our blog from Hampden Street you may like to leave a comment for us and tell us what you would like more of.

This week Kea Reading Group have been to learning more about how to make a picture in your head while you are reading. They read the journal story 'Bus Driver' Part 1 Number 3 2001. Kiera did a wonderful job of sharing her mind picture of this text from the article.....

"Bus drivers have to keep a careful look out all the time. There is so much traffic and so many pedestrians. There are flashing traffic lights, screaming sirens and people, people and more people."

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Moutere have been learning about shadows and how they are formed and what happens to them during the day. Please leave a comment for them on what you think of their investigation. Remember to tell them your first name when you leave your comment.

This week for homework we had to write a report about a subject of our choice. Hayley wrote her report about Jupiter and she emailed it to us. Didn't she do well.Jupiter’s sizeJupiter is the biggest planet in the universe it is at least as big as all of the other planets put together.

Jupiter’s moonsJupiter has at least 47 moons and Earth has only one moon.

Jupiter is a gas giantJupiter is sometimes called a gas giant because that’s what it is a giant ball of gas that’s why nobody can land on it.

Jupiter’s great red spotJupiter’s great red spot is a storm the size of Earth.

Monday, November 09, 2009

We have been learning how to put fractions into order form smallest to biggest. With Dolphin Racing you pick the colour of the dolphin you want to win the race and then pick the biggest fraction to make it swim the fastest to win the race!With this fraction ordering game you have to slot your fraction into the right place from highest to lowest. Be careful though because each time you get it wrong you can lose a life!With Fraction Number Lines you have to darg the fractions onto the right place on the number line.With the Balloon Popping Game you have to burst the smallest fraction balloon first then pop the bigger one.

We are learning in class about equivalent fractions. Fractions that are the same size. Fraction Bars will help you learn more about how to make equivalent fractions. Move the bars back and forward until you can see fractions that are the same size.Fraction Memory goes over the same thing where you have to match the equivalent fractions. You can do it on your own or in pairs.With Fractions One you have to drop the equivalent fractions onto the correct shape.

Saturday, November 07, 2009

This week for homework we are writing a report on a topic of your choice. I found this excellent web site to support report writing called Writing Fun. When you click on the writing type it gives you some ideas on how to write all sorts of writing genre. When you click on report it tells you how to write a report and even gives examples of reports that other people have written.

You can then write your own on line and print it off. It is a really useful site. It will be interesting to see what you come up with and how you get on with it.

Friday, November 06, 2009

Yesterday was pet day. I took Lilly's puppies to school. This is a group photo of all the puppies.This is Jemma holding one of them. Don't you think that that puppy loves her.Look at this one. It is asleep on Shaun. There are two puppies that are always asleep at the back of their cage.Skye would love to take this little puppy home- can't you tell!Then a man came and his dog rounded up ducks. I thought that that was amazing. How it did not eat them because I know that Mikey and Lilly would eat them.This is Rachel and her pet lamb. I don't know it's name but it was so cute.

Wow look at Hugo's dog Moko. He is huge.After that we did some pet day activities. We made play dough animals and drew animals using Kid Pix. I wonder who made this dog and snail. It is so cool.Look at Alex and her bunny. I wonder if the bunny is Alex's favourite animal.

Look at this movie. It is of the lambs feeding. Look at the tail wagging.

We went on an Observatory Visit last week on Thursday related to our project on Space this term. This is George looking at the Moon book. He is looking at the part of the Moon that you could see in the telescope that night.This is one of the telescopes that the owner of the observatory ( Mr Knowles) has. This particular telescope happened to be looking at the Moon. Up the top is a picture of the telescope. If you looked through that telescope you would have seen a quarter of the Moon. That quarter of the Moon was on the right, top side.This is a photo of Mr Knowles. He came to our school and talked to us about space. The observatory was round and small. There were two telescopes there one looking at the Moon and one looking at Jupiter. He turned a telescope around so that we could look at two stars circling one another. Most of us enjoyed the experience and thank you, Mr Knowles for letting us use your telescopes and teaching us about space.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Wow talk about time flying! I have had the pleasure of sharing the learning experiences with Moturoa for the last month and what an action packed four weeks that has been. Allanah must be exhausted by the end of each term.With all the studying, assignments, and exams that have had to be done over the last year, spending time in the classroom has reminded me of the real reason why I have chosen to train as a teacher - the children. What a great bunch Moturoa are. I will surely smile when I remember some of the things that we have done together, although I do not think that my attempts at playing the recorder will make me smile, laugh perhaps.

Allanah has put so much time into my training and shown so much patience, that saying 'THANKS HEAPS' can not start to cover it. Thankfully today is only Wednesday and tomorrow is Pet Day, so there is still time to fit more learning into what has already been a fantastic experience. Although I would really love to bring my dog JJ to Pet Day, I think that being at school all day would not be very fair for her. So I have posted a couple of photos to share with you instead.

This is JJ when she was just a puppy. So cute and look how tiny she was. Her favourite things are: food, sleeping, food, playing fetch, food, swimming, food, going for a walk and did I mention FOOD. Her favourite person is me of course, oh and anyone that will feed her!

This is JJ now. She is just over five and a half years old. Her coat is so soft and cuddly. She is a very affectionate dog and loves to give you hugs. She has an extremely annoying habit of stealing your shoe and taking it into her kennel to sleep with. She only takes one of each shoe, not a pair, a very strange habit indeed.